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Smile
- Narrated by: Roddy Doyle
- Length: 5 hrs and 3 mins
- Categories: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction
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Excellent
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Meet Charlie Savage: a middle-aged Dubliner with an indefatigable wife, an exasperated daughter, a drinking buddy who’s realized that he’s been a woman all along.... Compiled here for the first time is a whole year’s worth of Roddy Doyle’s hilariousseries for the Irish Independent. Giving a unique voice to the everyday, he draws a portrait of a man - funny, loyal, somewhat bewildered - trying to keep pace with the modern world (if his knees don’t give out first)
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Funny, heartwarming and real.
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Born in the slums of Dublin in 1901, his father a one-legged whore-house bouncer and settler of scores, Henry Smart has to grow up fast. By the time he can walk he's out robbing, begging, often cold, always hungry, but a prince of the streets. At 14, already six-foot-two, Henry's in the General Post Office on Easter Monday 1916, a soldier in the Irish Citizen Army, fighting for freedom.
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Excellent story and narration
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buy this!
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Paddy Clarke, a 10-year-old Dubliner, describes his world, a place full of warmth, cruelty, love, sardines, and slaps across the face. He's confused; he sees everything but he understands less and less.
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Awful!
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The final book in Roddy Doyle's highly acclaimed Barrytown Trilogy focuses on Jimmy Rabbitte Sr, who is facing the vicissitudes of unemployment when his friend Bimbo invites him to become his partner in a new venture: a fish and chip van.
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last part of the trilogy, farewell to the Rabbits
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Drinking pals back in their Dublin days, Davy rarely sees Joe for a pint anymore - maybe one or two when Davy’s over from England to check in on his elderly father. But tonight, one pint will turn to three and then five as Joe recounts a secret, leading the two men on a bender back to the haunts of their youth. Joe has left his wife and family for another woman, Jessica. Davy knows her too, or he should - she was the girl of their dreams all those years ago, the girl with the cello in George’s Pub.
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Excellent
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Meet Charlie Savage: a middle-aged Dubliner with an indefatigable wife, an exasperated daughter, a drinking buddy who’s realized that he’s been a woman all along.... Compiled here for the first time is a whole year’s worth of Roddy Doyle’s hilariousseries for the Irish Independent. Giving a unique voice to the everyday, he draws a portrait of a man - funny, loyal, somewhat bewildered - trying to keep pace with the modern world (if his knees don’t give out first)
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Funny, heartwarming and real.
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A Star Called Henry
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Overall
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Performance
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Born in the slums of Dublin in 1901, his father a one-legged whore-house bouncer and settler of scores, Henry Smart has to grow up fast. By the time he can walk he's out robbing, begging, often cold, always hungry, but a prince of the streets. At 14, already six-foot-two, Henry's in the General Post Office on Easter Monday 1916, a soldier in the Irish Citizen Army, fighting for freedom.
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Excellent story and narration
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Overall
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Performance
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buy this!
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Overall
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Performance
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Paddy Clarke, a 10-year-old Dubliner, describes his world, a place full of warmth, cruelty, love, sardines, and slaps across the face. He's confused; he sees everything but he understands less and less.
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Awful!
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
The final book in Roddy Doyle's highly acclaimed Barrytown Trilogy focuses on Jimmy Rabbitte Sr, who is facing the vicissitudes of unemployment when his friend Bimbo invites him to become his partner in a new venture: a fish and chip van.
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Brilliant!
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For the past few years Roddy Doyle has been writing stories for Metro Eireann, a newspaper started by, and aimed at, immigrants to Ireland. Each of the stories took a new slant on the immigrant experience, something of increasing relevance and importance in today’s Ireland.
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Beautiful
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Love the snapper
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A really strong Detective Story Read with style
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Summary
Random House presents the audiobook edition of Smile, written and read by Roddy Doyle.
Smile has all the features for which Roddy Doyle has become famous: the razor-sharp dialogue, the humour, the superb evocation of childhood – but this is a novel unlike any he has written before. When you finish the last page you will have been challenged to re-evaluate everything you think you remember so clearly.
Just moved in to a new apartment, alone for the first time in years, Victor Forde goes every evening to Donnelly's pub for a pint, a slow one.
One evening his drink is interrupted. A man in shorts and pink shirt brings over his pint and sits down. He seems to know Victor's name and to remember him from school. Says his name is Fitzpatrick. Victor dislikes him on sight, dislikes too the memories that Fitzpatrick stirs up of five years being taught by the Christian Brothers. He prompts other memories too – of Rachel, his beautiful wife who became a celebrity, and of Victor's own small claim to fame, as the man who says the unsayable on the radio.
But it's the memories of school, and of one particular Brother, that he cannot control and which eventually threaten to destroy his sanity.
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- Ms. Caroline A. Wilde
- 17-09-17
Brilliant but disturbing
Roddy Doyle always brings you into the heart of Dublin life, the characters you recognise, the scenarios you've witnessed for yourself. The middle aged men he describes could be in any bar you walk into, the tiny world of Irish celebrity during the boom years is astutely accurate. As you believe the voice of the main character, you are drawn into the insecurities of the modern male, eclipsed by a more successful and stronger partner, emasculated, but sweet and supportive. Beneath it all, however, is a dark undercurrent, a scar that cannot heal. The ramifications of this are slowly revealed, the reconstructed outer personality hiding the horror within. I cannot help but hope none of this is biographical.
2 people found this helpful
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- Bee
- 15-09-17
Totally absorbing tale of finding a way to live
A close relative of mine went to a Christian Brothers institution so at times-even though the descriptions of casual cruelty are low key- this was amost too much for me. But, but the writing kept me coming back. Brilliant.
2 people found this helpful
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- Tas
- 08-09-17
Brilliant!!!
I was blown away by this work, I wanted to get back into fiction & this definitely got me there!
1 person found this helpful
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- Stephen reid
- 17-08-19
What a superb book . The ending is truly shocking
So different to his other books. The raw guilt of institutional abuse by individuals that wreck the victims life. A book that sadly will echo with thousands of his countrymen who suffered this nightmare..
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- Clady Lad
- 22-06-19
An excellent listen
As a big fan of Roddy Doyle's work, and also a student whose parents entrusted my education to the 'loving care' of The Christian Brothers, this was a must-buy for me and I was not disappointed. It tackles, head-on, a running sore with Ireland's messy intermeshed relationship between The Church and authority, shedding further light on the already well-documented damage this has done to many people over the years. The book is quite different in style for RD but as always the wonderful natural feel of the dialogue makes it seem as if you're sitting at an adjacent table in a bar just listening in. The story moves on at a good pace with excellent narration by the author and there's no filler here whatsoever. Others have mentioned the ending with some unhappy with it, however I found it excellent and completely unexpected.
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- Anonymous User
- 19-03-18
Very sad story well told.
its always special when the author narrated. Sad story well told. recommend it highly to all.
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- Michelle
- 18-12-17
Not as good as the hype portrayed
Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?
I downloaded this book having heard it reviewed on Radio 4. Unfortunately I didn't feel it deserved the glowing report. Although the setting and characters were portrayed eloquently, there was little substance to the story. I felt little for the characters and found even less that hooked me into their predictable disclosures. A disappointing purchase.